No new fungal meningitis cases reported in TN

Oct. 6, 2012

Persons with Meningitis Linked to Epidural Steroid Injections, by State

Written by

The Tennessean

Updated at 1:53 p.m.

While the fungal meningitis outbreak continued to balloon across the country Saturday, no new cases or deaths were reported in Tennessee in the last 24 hours, a spokesman for the state Department of Health said.

On Saturday, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 64 had been sickened in nine states nationwide with 7 deaths. Tennessee’s share of those cases remains unchanged at 29, said health department spokesman Woody McMillin.

All of the cases reported so far involve people who had received epidural steroid injections prepared by New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts between July 1 and Sept. 28. Those injections, which are typically administered for back pain, remain the chief suspect in the outbreak.

Three have died after treatments in Tennessee, with two deaths reported in Michigan and one each in Maryland and Virginia, officials said.

New cases were reported in every previously affected state except Tennessee, according to CDC reports.

Cases doubled or more in four states. Virginia went from 4 cases to 11. Minnesota and Ohio are newly affected.

Both of the new deaths reported Saturday are in Michigan.

Previously reported:

No new cases of the fungal meningitis outbreak have been reported in Tennessee in the last 24 hours, a spokesman for the state Department of Health said Saturday afternoon.

On Friday, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 47 had been sickened in seven states nationwide, with 29 of those coming from Tennessee.

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Those numbers, at least in Tennessee, remained the same Saturday, said spokesman Woody McMillin.

All of the cases reported so far involve people who had received epidural steroid injections prepared by New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts between July 1 and Sept. 28. Those injections, which are typically administered for back pain, remain the chief suspect in the outbreak.

Three have died after treatments in Tennessee, with one reported death each in Maryland and Virginia, officials said.

Eddie C. Lovelace of Albany, Ky. died on Sept. 17, after receiving the treatments in July and August.

Twelve days after Lovelace died, 55-year-old Thomas Warren Rybinski of Smyrna succumbed to the infection at Vanderbilt.

Diana Reed, 56, of Brentwood, died at Saint Thomas Hospital on Wednesday, the family’s lawyers said.

Ilisa Bernstein with the Food and Drug Administration said this week that foreign fungal material had been found in a sealed vial from the New England Compounding.
Three separate lots, or nearly 17,700 vials, of that injection have been voluntarily recalled and are the focus of the investigation. About 75 facilities in 23 states have received the potentially contaminated steroid injections, national officials said.

That number includes three pain clinics in Tennessee: Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgery Center in Nashville, Specialty Surgery Center in Crossville and PCA Pain Care Center of Oak Ridge.

Officials say potentially more than 1,000 patients received the steroid through epidural injections at the Tennessee facilities between July 1 and Sept. 28.

The search for more affected patients will continue “for some time,” Dr. John Dreyzehner, Tennessee’s commissioner of health, said Friday.

CDC experts urged people to contact their physicians if they may have been exposed to the potentially contaminated drugs.

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“All patients who may have received these medications need to be tracked down immediately,” said CDC medical officer Dr. Benjamin Park. “It is possible that if patients with infection are identified soon and put on appropriate antifungal therapy, lives may be saved.”

In “an abundance of caution,” the company also is recalling nearly a dozen other medications it has created. They include saline solution, lidocaine and glycerin. Those other medications have not been implicated in the outbreak.

The FDA released a list of the medicines being voluntarily recalled by the compounding center at http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ DrugSafety/ucm322752.htm.

The CDC released a list of all 75 facilities that received shipments of the contaminated drugs at http://www.cdc.gov/hai/outbreaks/meningitis-facilities-map.html.

CDC experts said Friday that they have identified two fungi in specimens obtained from nine of the fungal meningitis patients: Aspergillus and Exserohilum.

Aspergillus had been previously identified in at least one Tennessee patient. State and federal health officials did not say whether Exserohilum, another common environmental mold, also has been found among the sickened in Tennessee, but Dreyzehner said in a news conference Friday that Aspergillus might not be the only fungus causing the meningitis cases.